Pretty harrowing read. Divine caprice, sexual assault, misogyny, toxic parents, toxic heteronormativity, narcissism, cannibalism, you name it. The writing is extremely crisp with not a word out of place. I was reminded of those origami solar panels that are super-compact to store but unfold into useful objects several times larger. Satisfying ending.

Intrusive thought was the short-lived show Manimal which my 10-year old self thoroughly enjoyed.

I wondered how obscure the character was among those who appreciate Greek Mythology. Couldn’t find anything on why Ms. Miller, trained in the classics and dramaturgy, chose this particular one.

Thought I’d look up Mestra’s (absolutely awful) dad for no reason and discovered a trove of bases for future passwords one may have to remember by heart:

But it gets very trippy quickly. I wouldn’t say dark. Trippy. I think the author had to do this to make deeper points about the role of art in nurturing, saving, and destroying us, and getting us to reflect upon ourselves and our tendencies.

I really like her drawing style and illustrations.

The Summer #

Spent a good, restful summer back home. Worked on a research project into how women who suffer from chronic and idiopathic conditions¹ talk about their health with conversational agents². This involved speaking to over fifteen people for close to forty hours of interviews. I was simply in awe of their resilience and openness to discuss difficult personal experiences for the sake of Science.

I was also thick and slow as molasses with trying to comb through a total of 400,000 words for any new insights into this human-agent negotiation/collaboration. This was the qualitiative research portion of our paper and easily the most tedious and difficult thing I’ve attempted so far here. I’m glad I had a research compatriot, the primary author, who was way more experienced at this sort of thing than I was 😳 🫠 A lot of things did ‘click’ about this kind of research and I’m grateful to have learned as much as I did.

The Finish Line #

I am taking just two classes and will be engaged in two research projects for a practicum I hope to complete by May next year. One involves T-Cell therapy and the other adolescent mental health. Not writing a thesis for I don’t care to put out yet another pointless and perfunctory document nobody will read³. I hope to make enough progress this term to start and finish another project the next: classes are great but not really how you learn things in this field.

I am paying no attention to the state of the job market and the news in general for my own sanity. I do know that I’ll have to “spray and pray” early and deferring this to February. “Our engineers don’t code anymore” is (a) absolutely not the flex dumb people think it is and (b) not uttered at a place I hope to work at; and I use Coding Agents extensively. I am super-excited about local LLMs for personal and work-related tasks⁴.

I have also fully embraced my old person phase and now try and go to bed before 10PM and wake up no later than 5AM. Truly the most magical time of the day for work and reflection. My wife, who’s maintained this schedule for decades as a writer, would like you to know that she told me so and that I should listen to her more.

My goals for the rest of the year are to walk a lot more, meditate regularly⁵, take a lot more photos, and continue learning perspective drawing. I am really hoping to do a 7-10 day meditation retreat very soon.

I watch this whenever I need a solid laugh. Yet to fail me.

The accountant’s played by Peter Hans Benson who, I submit, deserves an Emmy for just this scene.

There’s quite a lot going on in the book and with the book. Some spoilers.

The Title #

I really do wonder if The Nerds would’ve been hung up on how close it sounds to “ethernet”.

The Editions #

There are two versions of the series, which was created by Hector Oesterheld.

The first, called “The Eternaut”, was published between 1957-59 with artwork by Francisco Lopez. No politics, just good 'ol alien invasion drama (from the sound of it.) It was published as a comic strip over 106 weeks and “was a massive success”.

The second is a reboot called “The Eternaut 1969”. It had a pronouced political tone (given the Cold War’s effects in South America), was published in a gossip magazine (!), and featured a different artist, Alberto Breccia. People didn’t take too well to his art/treatment. He refused to budge and the series was canceled. Oesterheld then pushed for its completion. Enjoyed great success in France and Spain however. This is the version I read.

There’s a Netflix show too.

Oesterheld & Breccia #

Oesterheld was a big figure in Argentinan graphic novels and comics who led quite the life. Geologist by training, big critic of the dictatorships, super Leftist, was disappeared and presumably killed by that government (along with his four daughters.)

Frank Miller is a big fan of Breccia who appears to be another giant in Argentinan graphic novels and comics.

The Book #

There’s time travel and stable loops and all that lovely stuff with enough political and social commentary. But it’s pretty hard to figure out and to see what’s going on. How Breccia draws the aliens is certainly an interesting choice. Thought it was just me getting old and inflexible with an auteur’s wild and expressionist style and was a bit relieved to read that I wasn’t alone in squinting and making “wtf” faces at the panels.

Excellent fore and afterwords by Erica Mena and Rodrigo Baeza that situate the work historically and explain its importance.

Looking forward to reading The Eternaut.

1. Bati by Jump to Addis
   
2. Staifia by Acid Arab
   

   Wife sent me this after a longass day. Sit on the couch, stare at a tree, get lost for a bit.

1. What's OAuth2 Anyway?
   

   Excellent piece covering OAuth2 in way more depth than I needed for a class I’m taking. But as the author notes:

   Thinking about why OAuth2 protocol has been designed the way it is, turned out to be a great exercise in threat modeling with immediate, straightforward and practical approaches to mitigate these threats. They can be reused to solve similar security concerns in other contexts outside of OAuth protocol, so you can benefit from a deep understanding of the protocol even if you are not a security expert who has to know the ins and outs of OAuth2.

   There is no useless knowledge. Cached.

2. GradFlow helps you make WebGL-based Animated Gradients
   

   For React. I asked Mr. Claude to turn it into a standalone ES Module and saved it here (minified).

   // Sample invocation
   import { createGradFlow } from "gradFlow.min.js";
   
   createGradFlow("#gradient", {
     config: {
       type: "mesh",
       preset: "dream",
       speed: 2.0,
       color1: "#facb55",
       color2: "#111",
       color3: "#336699",
     },
   });
   

   Here’s another maker of gradients.

3. First Principles of Interaction Design by Bruce "Tog" Tognazzini
   

One thing led to another on the Open Internet¹ and I came by this curious and lovely short story by artist Charlie White² called “The Beatrice Davenport Morands” (cached HTML) who wrote it for Public Fiction magazine in 2013.

Like if Wes Andersen et al wrote The Prestige.

Her agent brought his granddaughter up to her NYC place one day, the girl was like 8 or 9. She asked her what she painted. Agnes had a rose in a small vase on her kitchen table & asked the girl “do you think this rose is beautiful?” & the girl said yes. Then Agnes put the rose in a cupboard & asked the girl “is the rose still beautiful?” & the girl said yes, & Agnes said “that’s what I paint”.

Maybe that’s a load of hooey. But I love it.

Via my buddy Mark, the one who drew that picture of me. Here’s the internet version of the story. First time I saw her work was at the Des Moines Art Center and I remember falling in love and immediately. I am happy I got to see this sage’s work up close again.

Mark followed up with this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I80_QImOlTA

1. Mars balnéaire by Flavien Berger
   
2. Blame by Gabriels
   

   As Bane said, “What a lovely lovely voice.” Here’s the live version.

3. Underneath It All by Scala & Kolacny Brothers
   

   Goosebumps.

4. Ala Bolelo by Anirudh
   

   Catchy. Great to dance to. Thalaiva. I could not understand a shred of the supposed ‘Telugu’ lyrics there. Here’s the Tamil original. They could’ve saved money by not translating it.

5. Holiday House by Beach House
   

   Heard this on NPR. Lovely, reminded me of Washed Out. Buy the album here.

6. The Big Surf by Monster Rally
   

   Heard this at the 85 Bar in the East Village. Took me back to when I was 15 and in Hong Kong and learning about its history. Basically this stuff in song. Lovely.

7. The Emperor of Oranges by Milky
   

   Heard on NPR in the Hy Vee parking lot in Des Moines, Iowa at ~8:30PM. We noted that the NPR DJ was killing it that night.

8. Sweet Sticky by Theo Parrish
   

   Via the wife. Gotta love a good hypnotic beat 🍭

1. This is a most lovely guide to styling lists with CSS
   

Absolutely stunning. A modern classic. Here are prints of his other paintings.

Faith is a signpost to who you are. So is what you fear. And the show takes a hard look at both those things. Riley is kind of my avatar in the story. Back in the days when I drank, there were times where I felt like the consequences weren’t going to apply to me. Everybody has a moment in their life where risky behavior meets good luck or bad luck. Riley’s just happened to go terribly wrong. The difference between Riley and so many of us is that he happened to be, in that split second, in a position where there was a direct and fatal consequence to someone else. And for me, that was always the really scary thing.

And as a former Catholic:

It’s unfortunately interspersed by lots of three annoying things:

1. God is Not Dead-level and style of exchanges between the non-believers (or the on-the-fencers) and the cloying faithful. I’m a sack of meat on this big rock around a fireball what’s it all about I am so lost. See this is the material realm bro, you need to yearn for the spiritual realm bro and so on.
2. A ton of out of context Bible quotes (extremely annoying) delivered by the very worst characters (the point of the story but it was a lot.)
3. Absolutely fucking interminable whinging and/or backstories and/or reminiscing by almost every major character. Like my wife noted, people just don’t talk to each other like this.

Spasmodic in its pacing due to these things. Seven episodes that could have been five, tops. If the Christianity in the show were a bottle of maple syrup, the first two episodes are like having a suitable amount of it over two pancakes. All except the last are like deciding to drink the rest of the bottle in four large gulps afterward.

Hamish Linklater, Zach Gilford, and (especially) Samantha Sloyan were casting perfection and inhabit their characters so freaking well. Sloyan’s character is in my Top 5 Punchables of Cinema. Rahul Kohli deserves special mention for the gravitas and sobriety he brought to his role. I felt a lot of feelings and wanted to hug Robert Longstreet’s Joe.

The most unconvincing grandma I’ve seen outside of Hindi TV serials and Telugu movies.

The music is 💯

Very meditative. Lots of pages like the ones below. Felt like the author was both having fun and practicing.

I really love the author’s works.

Never been to Oak Park, a fine fine-dining place in Des Moines. The food was excellent but this was a most amazing cocktail.

Tokyo Drift: “Uncle Val’s Botanical gin, Choya Umeshu plum wine, Cocchi Americano Bianco, Mio sparkling sake.”

You think you’re done with your sip and, like my wife noted, it just keeps unfolding.

I’ve switched to Firefox on both desktop and mobile. Opened up Chrome to test a project, was greeted by this lovely home page, and the dogs started barking in my head.

We have “Enshittification” and “Dickovers”. I need to workshop a word for this sad melange of shit. I have a lot of thoughts when I see tasteless and confused things like this from Tech. What is the structure of the company that put this shit out into the world? Are teams allowed to talk to each other? Who okayed this? What are the incentives of the people who lead teams that produce something like this? Do they have launch parties? Are they genuinely proud of shipping ‘experiences’ like these?

Do they use their own products? Are they as sad and frustrated when they do? Do they ever talk to their users? Do they see them try and use their products? Do they review and discuss the feedback? Are they incentivized to give a shit? Does it end completely at shareholders and salaries?

Is anyone at any level at the company empowered to say What the actual fuck is this?

Here it is as a Mondrian piece, courtesy of Google Gemini.

Deep breaths.

It’s fun. Performed by Jeffries and a second, a hype man. I imagined them, two bros on a weekend, comfortably microdosed, singing the entire album into a laptop over an hour or less. Each track is only a minute and a half long and the album’s 11 minutes for the attention deficited. I do wonder what the B-side and rejects sound like. It’s very clear that he’s a legit musician. I heard what would’ve been a perfect (viral?) COVID project for the bored and talented. I also thought of Das Racist. I considered the album cover and wondered which tracks involved das arse for percussion.

It made me miss my friends from college. I sent this to them and know they’ll love it.

He’s selling the masterpiece in vinyl. Here he is singing a nice song. Here’s his Instagram account. There’s a “stim II” I will listen to right before I land in NYC later this month.

Overall rating: B+null

Tracks

• kombucha

  Rating: B+

  New favorite earworm.

• mango chutney

  Rating: A+

  It’s catchy, I am Indian, we’re talking mangoes, I am obligated. First appearance of hype man.

• deeply aware

  Hype man makes presence felt more than last track.

• doing my thing
• chicken or salmon

  Rating: A

  In two years, my little niece will sing this in a loop for two hours.

• hot sauce

  Rating: A

  Country! I thought of an oversized Dodge truck.

• you can be
• mama kimchi

  Rating: B+

  Best duet in the album.

• rise up

  Rating: A+

  An anthem ✊ No more “one last flick”. Get the fuck off your couch and do something.

• let me live

Sad, unsettling, disturbing, funny, in that order. We griamced a lot but could not look away. Based on a 1993 play which I would now love to see. Had a scene that was so over the top and contrived, I could see nothing but a desperation to register it into the canon of ‘iconic’ movie scenes.

Matthew McConaughey acts with the ‘Matthew McConaughey’ dial set to medium-high (with the exception of that one scene.) Juno Temple is so brilliant you can’t tell she’s British. I wish I could say ‘innocent’ but none of the characters are.

And there isn’t a single sympathetic character. Except McConaughey’s, they’re all comically, irredeemably greedy and broken and dumb as shit.

This is like “Hereditary” in that it’s brilliant and I won’t ever watch it again but will gleefully recommend it to people.

It’s engagingly and beautifully creepy. Would make for a great movie in the hands of an adept director. Or maybe we should all leave this beautiful work alone.

Spoilers!

Repressed homosexuality, possible asexuality, untreated mental issues, late-stage Capitalistic ennui, and body dysmorphia do figure in the story amidst plenty of other themes. But Abby is profoundly, debilitatingly lonely and empty. The text and imagery convey these real horrors perfectly. She is terribly exploited and disappointed by every system she’s a part of and every character she meets. A sad (but beautifully drawn and written) trainwreck to behold.

“Through The Woods” #

I went looking for other books by Carroll and bought “Through the Woods” (2014), a collection of five short stories, one of which, “His Face All Red”, attracted quite a bit of attention on Twitter a while ago (at least in the circles of those who read these sorts of things.)

Lovely stuff. I’ll be reading more by them soon.

This is the “The Head of the Fasting Buddha”, an absolutely spellbinding piece discovered in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, from 2-3 CE.

Since I cannot be arsed to seek Enlightenment (it sounds like too much work), I will have attended a pizza party an hour after I published this note 🍕🧘‍♂️

Wife said that she saw the 1971 version which scarred her as a 5-year old. I won’t watch it any time soon but even a reading its plot suggests that Coppola favored creating this ‘atmosphere’ for the first three quarters of the movie, only to end up boring the shit out of us with the self-indulgence and weirdness: there’s a scene where two kids frisk and frolic in a way I am positive kids did not in the 1860s, before suddenly and somberly getting back to drawing water from a hand pump. Feels weird, doesn’t make sense, adds to nothing. There are plenty of these.

Pacing: Everything’s resolved in the last 15-20 minutes.

We’ll re-watch Lost in Translation next.

Jeffrey Gibson, an interdisciplinary artist, curator, and convener celebrated for his work in painting, installation, video, and performance, drew upon Indigenous kinship philosophies to create nashoba holba / wayaha / coyote.

A testament to the importance and intelligence of the animal kingdom, the sculpture invites viewers to consider what animals have endured, and the lessons they may be able to teach us.

nashoba holba / wayaha / coyote is one of four sculptures commissioned from Gibson by the Metropolitan Museum of Art for its 2025-2026 Genesis Façade Commission, each of which depicts an anthropomorphized animal, in this case a coyote. Within North American Indigenous mythology, the coyote’s specific meaning varies, but it is generally depicted as a cunning trickster and agile shapeshifter.

Known to reference various forms of Indigenous regalia throughout his multidisciplinary practice, Gibson’s coyote is embellished with the pelt of another coyote, which it wears draped around its shoulders like a cape, and necklaces of berries and beads. The sculpture is the result of a labor-intensive process that began with mixed-media maquettes and concluded with cast bronze sculptures that were produced with U.A.P. (Urban Art Projects), a foundry in Newburgh, New York.

I love miniatures. So I loved this so much and spent a lot of time with it. Here’s a fascinating interview with the artist.

Absolutely fucking gorgeous. Wow.

This is the kind of photography I hope to do one day. More of their work.

That’s a still from this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJeh28Af_jI

The beautiful background score is by Room Thirteen.

Saw this on the “First Friday” event Mainframe Studios puts on each month.

This is even more stunning in person. Here’s more of her work.

Saw this at The Whitney and was transfixed and love it beyond words. Only 6 minutes long and perfect for a quick meditation 🧘

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dx6ag2n5sjc

In Samadhi Jordan Belson attempts to portray a visual phenomenon he perceived while in a meditative state. A follower of Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhism, Belson maintained a strict Yogic practice and lived a largely ascetic and solitary life in San Francisco in the two years leading up to the film’s creation. He rendered his experience in a color palette inspired by natural elements and The Tibetan Book of the Dead, accompanied by an electronic score punctuated by sounds of his inhaling and exhaling.

If you ever find yourself in Des Moines, you owe it to yourself to enjoy a burrito at El Rey. The best in town and this is not a controversial claim.

Absolutely commanding piece of filmmaking by Nolan et al. I wonder how many other directors can attempt things at this grand a scale (Villeneuve and Ridley Scott come to mind.)

Was surprised to hear “Mom” and “Dad”. Considered the film by itself and didn’t care whether it was aligned with Homer’s vision and think that people who fret over things like these are silly (even if you’re a Classics prof.)

Also loved the frustrations over a trans man playing a fictitious man, a black woman playing a fictitious woman, and humanity’s loneliest and wealthiest piece-of-shit committing to saving Western Civilization from these Woke-washings by making a white “historically accurate” version of, again, a fictitious fucking epic¹. And that too with his AI that, not until long ago, allowed you to disrobe anyone you pleased – per Western Christian Values of course.

Agamemnon’s helmet was fire. You don’t get to see his face too well but he was played by one of the Safdie brothers.

I felt terrible for Polyphemus², especially when he sits down sadly at the beach, but remembered that him and Odysseus were punished by Zeus (him in his only eye 😢) for them violating xenia with respect to each other so there’s that. The internet tells me that his dad Poseidon, a historical figure who was once the God of The Sea, doesn’t restore his vision.

I predicted that I would be a puddle of tears when I saw Argos greet his master one last time and I was right.

Nice grandma and I chatted outside the theater and she wondered where all the men for each round of massacres came from. She noted, and I agreed, that “That boat was too small.”

The part where Odysseus reflects upon the consequences of breaking every sacred unwritten bond between people is the closest Nolan got to political commentary. We discussed the meditation over and tension between free-will and destiny.

The soundtrack’s by Ludwig Goransson, just fits the movie so well, and is an adventure unto itself.

Classic John Williams score tho 🥰

I felt nothing but a small sadness watching that insipid and unnecessary halftime show. Kind you feel when you see people embarrass themselves for completely avoidable reasons. I like to think they consulted an AI model to plan it all out, for I do not want to believe that a bunch of flesh and blood human creatives sat in a meeting room and went “Yes, this is it” and high-fived each other over the final draft of that weirdass shitshow. It was like Backrooms but for art and entertainment.

Argentina conducted themselves worse than rowdy middle schoolers and I am glad Spain won.

The Cosmic Mother is very strong here. AMMORU 🙏🌸♥️👹

The first was this excellent one for a steel company:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvGwIFVUK7M

Now assume that all the fears about immigrants and their seemingly concerted project to pollute and raze Western Civilization are true. Assume that a small, imported minority are indeed responsible for over half of unspeakable crimes. Assume that Europe does need a long and hard look at the quality and quantity of the people it permits across its borders.

Assume that a vast majority of Europeans are just tired of this but are muzzled by The Left, that there is this abject need for a bold artist to bring these issues to light.

This ain’t it. It is an irredeemably shit statement about all these concerns and is no Death Wish. The script, background score, acting, cinematography, action sequences, pacing, editing, everything: it is laughably bad. If UATX offered a BFA in Film, this would be a hastily cobbled-together senior project¹.

Spoiler: The protagonist guns down an entire immigrant family for a ghastly crime committed by one of its members as ‘justice’. The director thinks this is just shock value, artistic flourish. All bad people are immigrants. There isn’t a single decent one. And lest you think this is a racist rampage, he murders a white ‘woke’ judge too.

Now the very fact that this strange and hateful pile of shit was panned and banned means two things:

1. It must contain Truth and Beauty. At least to the “Help! I’m being repressed!” types.
2. It will be promoted by the world’s biggest edgelord and saddest human being.

Speaking of protagonist. He may be an illegal immigrant himself. But he’s wealthy, white, handsome, and pursues extralegal justice in a black turtleneck so he’s cool. Adapting a popular quote with online parlour firebrands: “He who saves his Country Civilization does not violate any Law.” Other reactions to the movie include lovely sentiments like “This is a checklist” and bumper stickers like “Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent” which I imagine one places right under that totally badass America/Punisher logo. You will hear him offer every single ultra-right xenophobic talking point in a monotone because he is dispassionate and ‘stoic’ and this manly, ubermensch Howard Roark-type.

He is portrayed by Armie Hammer who plays a dude who murders people immigrants for the transgressions he was accused of in real life:

We live in a simulation. I wondered how they roped him in for the main role. As that article explains, he appears to have done this out of desperation:

and expresses regret in that same article:

[…] A source within Hammer’s team claimed that the actor cried when he first saw the film in full.

“The first time he saw it, he was in tears,” they told Belloni. “He called me and said, ‘Fuck. This is hateful, disgusting.’”

but, the good American that he is:

[…] Hammer was paid approximately $250,000 for the role. Despite being unhappy about the final results, the source indicated that Hammer would reprise his role for the sequel – if the price is right.

I’d also need a cool studio space with 18ft ceilings and giant windows with great views of the city to ‘spark’ things you know?

The answer choices gave me quite a lot to think about regarding this whole business and where it’s going. I’m somewhere between:

The Worrier: It’s real, it’s powerful, and that’s exactly why it worries you — not in a doom way, in a ‘we should really be more careful than we’re being’ way. You take the capabilities seriously and the risks seriously, and you’d like the conversation to be a few degrees more sober.

The Disillusioned: You watched this movie already with crypto and you know how it ends. It’s oversold, the value is thinner than advertised, and the concrete harms are piling up while everyone argues about the rapture. You document the gap between the promise and the receipts, meticulously.

Sounds about right but I’d say it’s demonstrably far more useful than blockchain and crypto (which have their uses but are not the panaceas they were hyped to be.)

(Cached)

Vaikuntam paints village scenes from the state of Telengana, India (I was born in its capital city.) This reminds me a lot of my mother’s art. I love these so much and hope to see his work in person soon.

Back in 2019 or so, my friend Mark asked me what I thought this image depicted. I was totally stumped and guessed fungal mycelia or birds. Drones? Terrible.

Nope, they’re wolf packs! 🐺 And the map shows how territorial wolves are. They created it “from 68,000+ GPS locations from 7 wolves in different packs during summer 2018.” The area here is the Greater Voyageurs Ecosystem which is a giant forest way up north in Minnesota.

Here’s an updated version from 2023-2024.

Badass.

A wonderfully fresh take. I especially love this one.

These are just so lovely to look at in person. ‘Fuzzy metal.’ I resisted all attempts to touch one.

Thought I’d seen this before and remembered that there’s basically a giant-ass variant of this outside the UN Headquarters!

They may look like brusque/quick strokes but look at the skill with that sheer! We were also told that art dealers would add ornate frames to otherwise controversial paintings to increase their respectability.

Someone explained that this painting was panned when it was exhibited since it wasn’t ‘realistic’ enough.

Very few things are cooler than Infinity Rooms. This one’s by Yayoi Kusama (I was messing with some duotone filters.) We only got a minute and wish we had more. You enter and you feel like the ground’s going to vanish from under you!

1. The Bosporous Strait by Alice Guerlot-Kourouklis
   

   I love this so much. Heard it at a cafe near 110th I think. It just transports me to lovely places, a three-minute mini-adventure. Reminds me so much of Andrew Bird’s Action Adventure which also has the same effect. Looks like it’s part of a soundtrack. Will give the album a listen soon.

2. give me ur love by Another Chemical Love Story
   

   Heard at RH Rooftop Restaurant in North Hills, Raleigh, NC.

3. Fireball by Pitbull ft. John Ryan
   

   Can’t believe I haven’t heard this one before. Heard this at La Cheile after that Knicks game.

My advisor took us on a lovely walk in Chelsea. We started at one of his favorite pizza places.

Via Catherine:

Related (and also via Catherine 🥰): a most lovely poem by Mary Oliver called “The Summer Day”

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean—
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

For nearly six years and counting, I’ve had the misfortune of using Microsoft Teams, an infernal piece of software that I am not entirely unconvinced isn’t sadistic psychological research into discovering novel UI/UX anti-patterns.

As I tried my best to use it today for a meeting, I realized that I’d rather tell people I sold crack cocaine or ran a puppy mill than divulge that I’m an engineer at Microsoft who works on Teams.

(Addressed to myself. I look forward to eating crow over most of this.)

To use LLMs effectively as a programmer,

1. You still need to know what to tell them¹.
   Be explicit. Especially with success/failure conditions. Especially when laying out a brand new project or module.

2. You need to check all the work.
   “Trust But Verify.” Did you solve the right problem? Are your tests testing the right thing? Are the docstrings and comments actually helpful and correct? Is the generated code maintainable, modular, readable? Are you confident you’ll be able to integrate features and bugfixes after you stepped away for six months?

3. You need to maintain that Vibe Coding is bullshit for anything other than proofs of concept.
   And atrophies your skills and your passion (that last part makes you a human being and not the thing they want to replace you with.) If you’re not a programmer, go wild. Citizen Coding ftw. And if your app blows up, thank you for ensuring our job security.

Wisdom and Experience will still matter. Generalists and specialists will still matter. Replacement fears are mostly unfounded and driven by greedy and/or uninformed people. Don’t listen to them. Hone your craft daily, be as good as possible at it, keep your chin up, learn how to use this tool, and you will be fine.

The Future #

The future will be complicated and nuanced and unpredictable. But here I go anyway.

The free-use, ad-free gravy train will end soon, especially with OpenAI and Anthropic. You will pay by the token or at least be inundated by stultifying and privacy-abusing ads. You will understand the true cost of inference and learn the larger and depressing reason behind how non-Google companies continued to attract investment (“Radix malorum est cupiditas.”)

Any personal AI that is both unobtrusive and effective 99% of the time (as endorsed by users) is what will endure. Think of OCR when you hit spacebar on an image of a receipt on Mac, but at a very advanced level. Good design is very hard and people don’t like it when you shove your shiny new toy into their faces, especially when they use your product remembering your cartoon villain glee at replacing them.

On-device LLMs, most likely fine-tuned open models, that are ‘good enough’ and take you 80%+ of the way there are the future (cached.)

I told one of my friends that this was the most beautiful work I had seen that day. She examined the piece, nodded, and went “Yeah wow… skinny legend.”

I won’t forget that evaluation for as long as I live.

1. If You Could Read My Mind by Viola Wills
   

   Heard at Khao Thai Restaurant, 2200 Amsterdam Av.

2. Universo by Dom La Nena
   

   Also check out Valse by the same artist. Fantastic to listen to as you move through a mass of people.

3. RUNWAY by Lady Gaga, Doechii
   

   On loop today.

This Oates gal is no different. I’d say she demonstrates exceedingly high competence and promise with words and images and flow.

Spoilers to follow.

This is as powerfully horrifying a fucking story as the last one. I might ask my wife to suggest some some buoyant material the next time. Same feeling where I sat up straight, read incredulously, got swept up into this delirium where my head screamed “Noooooo!”, and read it at least twice to figure out the horror of what had happened first and what it was all about next.

There is a lot of interpretation and commentary and even a movie (starring Laura Dern, fittingly called Smooth Talk). I was very surprised to see a dedication to Bob Dylan. And Oates herself thought that “Death and the Maiden” was “rather too explicit”:

The Antagonist #

This is at least based on Charles Schmid, AKA the Pied Piper of Tucson, a notorious serial killer from the 60’s.

So there’s that.

But then the interpretation and symbolism and mythology go to bizarre and truly fascinating places and she is really chill with all of it.

He’s Satan: cloven-hooved, weird gait, needs to support himself. He knows things he cannot possibly know. Connie knows there’s something seriously amiss but cannot help being curious and cannot help being powerless. The allure! The license plate on his jalopy is 33 19 17. Judges 19:17 is where the title of the story comes from. The sum 33 + 19 + 17 is 69 which would be of deep interest to Oates’ sparring partner on Twitter. Oates should’ve squeezed a 420 in there to get him to actually read her work (“guys… guys…”). I’ve read about how “An Old Friend” is to be read as “An Old Fiend.”

Or maybe he’s Pan (he says the place she came from doesn’t exist any longer, and where she had intended to go is also no longer an option) or the Big Bad Wolf (says he can easily destroy her house/haven.) Most likely Satan though.

WTF Happened? #

No idea and I don’t think I can think about this more, really. It’s graphic without being graphic. The wailing, sweat, resignation, surrender, Connie’s sacrifice and (possible?) violation, and sheer sinisterness in the last few paragraphs are experiences I won’t ever forget. Consider:

“My sweet little blue-eyed girl,” he said in a half-sung sigh that had nothing to do with her brown eyes but was taken up just the same by the vast sunlit reaches of the land behind him and on all sides of him—so much land that Connie had never seen before and did not recognize except to know that she was going to it.

Jesus. I think I’ll just settle with what Oates said about her work:

It was cast in a mode of fiction to which I am still partial—indeed, every third or fourth story of mine is probably in this mode – “realistic allegory,” it might be called. It is Hawthornean, romantic, shading into parable.

Okay. This is not what it is but “It’s a parable about the monsters you’ll encounter as you’re growing up” is fine by me. I’ll work with my wife to read some ‘light Hawthornean’ things next.

Here’s a short film adaptation on Vimeo.

A big attraction. We weren’t allowed to take photos of the jaw-dropping interiors.

Met this little angel on my way back from New Jersey. Would wave at people through the window and say “Hi!” or “I love you!”

Conductor went around saying “Thank you. God bless you.” with a big smile as he was scanning tickets.

For the next 45-or-so mins, I found myself in some alternate, hopeful dimension where the World didn’t suck.

I’d heard about bodega cats but meeting one in person is something else. No one knew the first kitty’s name. The second goes by Maxi 🥰 She was very curious and affectionate.

The very picture of contentment (and entitlement.)

1. The Curse by Agnes Obel
   
2. Lutt Le Gaya by Shashwat Sachdev
   

   Yet to see the movie but I love this! Heard in NC at my little cousin’s engagement party.

3. Selva Selva by ParraforCuva
   
4. Teleport by Ivan Dorn
   

Kupka was a pioneer of Orphism. Here are some more of his mesmerizing works.

by Paul Luna in Typography: A Very Short Introduction

Paul Stiff wrote this inspirational list of dos and don’ts for typographers in 1999. It was written in response to an email circulated by Robin Kinross requesting typographic equivalents for the Dogme 95 injunctions of Danish film-makers.

1. Readers come first, second, and third. Designing is not done for peer approval or prizes.
2. Readers are neither ‘target audiences’ nor clichés: they bring their own purposes and questions to every encounter with text.
3. ‘Reading’ is not one-dimensional: there are many reading acts.
4. Content matters: design nothing that is not worth reading.
5. Stand by meaning.
6. Embrace the big picture.
7. Attend to details.
8. Looking good is better than looking different.
9. Looking good is worthless without making sense.
10. Designing and making is collective work: many brains and hands are involved. The designer must not be credited unless all other workers are also credited.

From a lovely zine I read in Asheville NC in June 2023.

1. SKAI ISYOURGOD by BLUEPRINT SUPREME
   

   As far as earworms go, this one’s right up there. Here’s the song it samples.

Didn’t know the 175th St station was built between 1928 and 1931. Didn’t know NYC subway stations had their own Wikipedia pages either.

1. NO FUTURE /dear freedom by _by.ALEXANDER
   

   I typically don’t pay attention to the lyrics but these appear to have been written by an edgy 19-year old. I could watch its music video forever:

   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdwsScBd9oA

2. snowfall by Øneheart x reidenshi
   
3. Muddat by Ali Sethi + Nicolas Jaar
   

1. Modern.css is a list of CSS code snippets that bring your game firmly into the 2020s
   

   Here’s a cheatsheet for common things. Amazing stuff you can do these days with just CSS.

A graduate student used the word “voluntold” in conversation. I’d never heard of it and love it.

I took these twenty years ago on Christmas Day 2005 en route to Minneapolis. I had just purchased my first digital camera (a Sony DSC-f717) two weeks ago and would play with it all day (manual focus in this case).

A most overwhelmingly beautiful mural.

Old New Yorkers have told me that these are the tallest they’ve seen in a while. There’s piles in the Midwest too but they’re spread out, don’t impede foot traffic, and don’t lead to the visual comedy of watching people (or noting oneself) summiting them. When not covered with punctured garbage bags, they can be very pretty to look at.

Binged with the wife over Christmas Break. Extremely well-written, with deliberate and meditative sequences¹, truly breathtaking camerawork, fantastic background scores, and large doses of dark humor. All the stuff we’ve come to expect from Gilligan & Co. who appear to have used every single penny of the $15 million Apple and Sony lavished on each episode.

I’ve spoken to quite a few people whose interest waned after the first three or so episodes. Mine certainly did but I stuck it through and realized that remonstrations about length and how boring many episodes are (a) missing the entire point about inviting you to explore isolation and its effects and (b) borne of Social Media Attention Spans. Consider²:

My wife, a writer and editor, told me about Gilligan’s stance on AI in creative fields (it’s not very complimentary) and it really shows.

I don’t know that a reasonable person would think they’re benevolent and harmless after the second half: The scene where The Hive abruptly stops chanting after Kusimayu’s transformation (and abandons the little goat) was very chilling.

Apple ordered two seasons and I cannot wait to see how the writers (hopefully) wrap things up. Lots of theories abound given the hints dropped throughout the first season (e.g. Finnegan’s Wake, mentioned in the very first episode, ‘loops’ to the beginning). Even if the second season sucks, I’d very much love to see what they do with Chekov’s Nuke:

Grad School #

I concluded a unstressful, fantastic first term back in school. I am typing this a week into my second which, from the looks of it, promises to make up for the chill of the first.

Still remain unsure of where exactly where this detour is going but am really happy I’m learning a lot of stuff immersed in domains I’ve always loved. What they do here and what you can do here is amazing, exciting, and pretty overwhelming. And by “here” I suppose I mean this crazy interlocked dynamo that’s the department + the university + NYC. I am very lucky to be drinking from this firehose.

I am hoping to figure out what I’d specifically like to work on this term. It’ll be fine even if I don’t.

Home ♥️ #

It was really lovely to go back home for break and see my family, especially my diva husky who was reasonably happy to have me back (even if for a bit). Was not ready to leave and pushed my return date twice. I read a lot of books, watched a lot of movies and shows, redid my wife’s website, worked on a small personal project I’ve wanted to start since 2018. I also played a lot with Claude Code and really felt the epochal shift in what it means to be a programmer post 2025.

NYC #

For as long as I can remember, I’ve had the general temperament of an irascible, retired Rabbi who’s just kinda had it you know? I thought I’d feel the same after I moved from my Midwest hinterland, few people, wide open spaces, no traffic problems, and mostly straight lines from source to target, almost disturbing level of quiet, to the Giant Beehive that is the Greatest City in the World. Thought I’d have a tough time adjusting.

Nope. I am still surpised by how much I’m just fine with living here. Still have a lot to learn about getting around and planning trips and appreciating the sheer size and density but it’s all so lovely and invigorating. People are mostly kind, helpful, and very direct. They don’t have time to be detained for (interminable per tradition) Midwestern chitchat. I kinda love this. You help, you keep walking. 🗽

1. Marimo is a giant improvement over Jupyter Notebooks
   

   Tons of features but, to me, the coolest things are: easy UI controls, git-friendliness, and reactivity.

2. A sample of Claude Code prompts someone used to create a fun Rust CLI app
   

   Messed with Claude Code over Christmas break and, while quite impressed, was unsure of how people used it to create and manage non-trivial projects.

   My initial thoughts: (a) Be explicit and (b) Check the work.

3. Maccy is a Clipboard Manager for macOS
   

   And the answer to my prayers. Activate a ‘multi-clipboard’ with a very simple and memorable ⌘Shiftc

   brew install maccy but please get it via Gumroad or the App Store.

4. MassGrave.dev provides plain and simple download links for Windows and Office
   

   Windows 11 is an ad platform and AI shit-showcase masquerading as a serious operating system that serious people are supposed to use to get serious things done. Bookmarking this in case I have to use this infernal piece of software.

   It’s all too sad really. I’ve used it since Windows 3.1 and still think Windows 7 was a fantastic OS (used it exclusively for gaming). Looks like I might be good with the Windows 10 Enterprise IOT LTSC version, at least until 2032.

5. How to Build an Agent
   

   Cached.

6. Flickity is a Carousel/Slider Library
   

My wife’s an O’Connor stan and called it “one of the greats” when I told her I was going to read it. I also told her I lost my shit when I opened a Google Document someone had posted with the story and found an “AI Summary” panel next to the text. A killer feature for VC champions who cannot scrape together enough time and attention for fifteen letter-sized pages (12pt, single-spaced, 1.5 inch margins) of a short story, what with being laden with the solemn and excruciating burden of buoying the economy on a cushion of mostly hot farts.

My resting state is composed almost entirely of pathos and general discomfiture.

This is my first FOC story. I enjoyed it so much I read it twice. Here’s the full text. Sans summary for you’ve always been able to do that in your fucking head.

Spoilers. #

She’s really funny. Some examples: Just everything leading up to the line “The grandmother decided that she would not mention that the house was in Tennessee.” Mr. Teagarden’s Coca-Cola fortune. “We’ve had an ACCIDENT!” And my absolute favorite: a shellshocked, orange-nosed cat hanging off its owners neck “like a caterpillar”. Love it.

And then it all goes dark. I wouldn’t even call this sudden; you barely notice where you are when it changes. ‘Slowly, then suddenly.’ Complete, masterful control over cadence. The Wikipedia page has a lot of quotes by O’Connor herself about what it all means at the end. She calls herself “a Catholic writer” and there’s all this stuff about her “anagogical vision”² and extending Christian Grace, even when your life is imperiled and even in your dying moments, and allowing God to flow through it all.

Two things that kept coming to mind were (1) this is about Satan and (2) this is about the simplicity, not banality, of Evil. And like the Misfit, some people know they’re being evil but are too far along and too embarrassed to concede their errors and mend their ways. The Grandma appeals to the Misfit’s good provenance and original nature. It doesn’t matter. It’s just how it is for him now. This is who he is, with “no real pleasure” in continuing to be so.

My daddy said I was a different breed of dog from my brothers and sisters. ‘You know,’ Daddy said, ‘it’s some that can live their whole life out without asking about it and it’s others has to know why it is, and this boy is one of the latters. He’s going to be into everything!’"

Overall, and speaking as someone who’s written JavaScript for a living, I’d say Ms. O’Connor shows good, intriguing promise as a writer. Tip-top stuff. I look forward to reading more of her work and soon.

Here’s a reading by Hannah Joyner.

This is also a very necessarily sad subject. There is so much in the movie that gave us a Rusty Cohle “Time is a Flat Circle” vibes. There isn’t much we felt and discussed that’s new under the sun. We need to remember history and speak the Truth (and to power) no matter how difficult it is. My attorney buddy told me that Burt Lancaster’s¹ character, Dr. Ernst Janning - Reich Minister of Justice - was one of his favorite characters. His climactic monologue will make you wonder why we keep making the same mistakes over and over again.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQicYslxGgE

You can and should watch the movie for free.

I went back to the American Museum of Natural History after about 8 years. I plan on going back as frequently as I can (it’s free with my student ID!) This might have been the best thing I saw and learned on my last trip.

Even ichthyologists cannot always identify a fish species just by looking at it from the outside. So they use a technique that makes flesh transparent, which lets them see the fish’s internal anatomy without cutting it open.

Clearing and staining can help scientists distinguish similar species, determine evolutionary relationships-and even see whether a male seahorse is carrying eggs! Before CT scans were available, clearing and staining was the best way to see inside an intact specimen, and the process is still widely used today.

Matthew Barney suspended himself in this space to draw those squiggles that feature his Cremaster Cycle logo (he calls them “Field Emblems”). Not a good shot since you can’t tell the sizes of things but this is a pretty large and cavernous space.

The Cremaster films are some of the weirdest things I’ve seen (in a mostly good way).

by Sol LeWitt. ‘Only’ wood and paint but you can stare at this thing forever.

By Martin Puryear. Red cedar, pine, black locust, ash, and rattan.

I photographed these at a 2015 exhibit in Chicago and saved them to perhaps use as funky webpage backgrounds. I still remember them being so beautiful and absolutely hypnotic in person. They were designed in Austria, Paris, Munich, and Russia.

I am very partial to the benisons of technology and civilization and hence hate camping.

But I did love glamping with the fine folk at Under Canvas in Valle, AZ.

I channeled a lot of Tom Haverford.

Statue of a Seated Woman from 101 CE–200 CE. “Here the figure’s head and arms, now missing, were made separately and attached by means of dowels, the holes for which are visible.”

This was a kind of template (one of a few) for noblewomen, goddesses, and other exalted female figures.

As told by Dr. Mihaly Mezei, Professor at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, at a seminar at my department.

It reminded me of an old joke […] Khruschev and Bulganin, at that time when there was a Soviet Union, were visiting the Queen of England. And so Khruschev notices that Bulganin puts a silver spoon in his pocket during the dinner.

So Khruschev said, "Well, ladies and gentlemen, I want to show you a magic trick. Here is a silver spoon. I put it in my pocket. Bulganin, take it out!

I really need to read this book and soon.

A most nonsensical thing I heard about mobiles from one of the most annoying and odious characters in television:

From the Sui (581-618 CE) and Tang (618-907 CE) Dynasties.

TL;DR: Get this.

A reasonable and normal human being would prepare to clean their laptop’s keyboard by getting together a cleaning cloth (e.g. microfiber) and solution (e.g. isopropyl alcohol). They would then power down their laptop and clean their keyboard (and maybe trackpad and screen) before pushing the power button on again.

That last part would not get you promoted at Apple. When your MacBook is shut down, any key is the power key. Because fuck you and your reasonable expectations.

The official guidance is to employ a can of compressed air. Make sure it’s really compressed so it gets rid of both debris and grease.

You can also issue terminal incantations, and hold down several keys and the power button in the shut down state (which is not guaranteed to work on newer laptops)¹.

In your (unreasonable) frustration, you can make a lovely, free, & helpful little utility that addresses this problem and attempt to publish it to the App Store. It will be rejected as being “not useful” because Apple, run by visionaries who care deeply about design, knows better and would really love it if you shut the fuck up.

A play on Mr. Lovenstein’s original by Dorsa Amir.

1. Private Caller by Saint Pepsi
   

   Loved zoning out to this, watched it twice. We peaked in the 90s (early 2000s weren’t bad either).

2. Dean Town by Vulfpeck
   

1. CloudHiker is a lovely replacement for ye olde StumbleUpon
   

Reminded me of the fluid and flowy stuctures built by the Engineers in the Prometheus movies. Was headed home from after putting away many pounds of food at my aunt’s.

Also:

Like Charles Bukowski said: “People think I’m down on 5th and Main at the Blarneystone throwin’ back shooters and smokin’ a cigar, but I’m on the top floor of the health club with a towel in my lap, watchin’ Johnny Carson.”

The Ashes, one of Cricket’s most hallowed tournaments held every two years between archrivals Australia and England since 1882, proved to be yet another theater of the ongoing embarrassment of English Cricket and its obdurate affection for a strange and ineffective philosophy, many notable individual heroics aside. I sincerely take no joy at all in this: everyone enjoys a nice and tense set of games between evenly matched opponents in any sport.

No pundit so of course here’s a trenchant analysis. Evident home advantage aside, Australia just played meat-n-potatoes Test Cricket: Bowlers suffocated with near-perfect line and length. Batsmen didn’t indulge in outlandish heroics (“Vibe Cricket”). And critically, every person responsible for catching a ball (you know, to get the other team out) made sure to wash their hands of any butter from breakfast. And there was, at the minimum, a ‘concept of a plan’. That’s all. Small things, great attention, done to perfection.

England managed to talk a big talk and do little else. All the dropped catches aside, I will not forget how their spearhead fast bowler, a very talented fella, got mouthy with and punished by the greatest Test batsman in a generation, all while dressed like a recently promoted minor henchman in a Guy Ritchie movie: “Bowl fast when there’s nothing going on Champion.” I cannot think of a more symbolic summary of both the series and the state of English Cricket than the minute and thirty seconds of that video.

Since 2013 England has won 10 and drew 6 of 38 Test matches against Australia.

• Shringara (Love and Beauty)
• Hasya (The Comic)
• Veera (The Heroic)
• Shanta (Tranquility)
• Raudra (Anger)
• Karuna (Compassion)
• Bhībhatsa (Revulsion)
• Bhayānaka (Fear)
• Adbhuta (Wonder)

My part of the internet is abuzz with the departure of an Apple Exec named Alan Dye who just may be responsible for all the dogshit UI/UX decisions at the company over the last decade or so that heavily favored looks over functionality to a lot of unheeded frustration and dismay. John Gruber offers a fascinating account of his seemingly ill-deserved accession and shittiness as an design leader. Here’s a zinger from the footnotes:

I have good reason to believe that Ive, in private, would be the first person to admit that [he made a mistake promoting Dye]. A fan of Liquid Glass Jony Ive is not. I believe he sees Dye as a graphic designer, not a user interface designer — and not a good graphic designer at that. I don’t think Alan Dye could get a job as a barista at LoveFrom [Ive’s design shop].

Oof. Here are two other posts on the drama.

The absolute nuke is an encore by designer Juan Buis of “Liquid Ass” fame.

Now I’m told it gets better:

Really hoping I smile at my nerdrage over “bullshit visions borne of arrogance, fart-sniffing, and desperation” a year or two from now.

It’s always The Hitchhiker’s Guide. I don’t think this man has read the book or the series in its entirety. If he has, I suppose it must be “being on the spectrum” that would explain his abject inability to see that Adams is ridiculing (and would mercilessly ridicule) people exactly like him.

Oates appears to have stirred him into critiquing film (source). Can’t wait for him to be the most trenchant presence here as well.

1. YEDA YUNG (Instrumental) by YUNG DSA
   
2. Charlie Mulvihills / The Conspiracy by Joanie Madden
   

   One of those perfect things to wake up and sip hot tea to on a winter weekend.

3. Islandman by Khepre
   
4. Djinn/Djiin by Sahale
   

   Heard this at some bar in San Francisco. Reminded me of the Fremen from Dune (esp that cover art).

5. Surf Rider by Il Est Vilane
   
6. Patterns by Ahmad Jamal Trio
   
7. Belisha Beacon by Funki Porcini
   

   Heard this off a young person’s boombox on the subway.

8. Nova by Amon Tobin
   
9. Privateering by Mark Knopfler
   
10. Trust Fades by Nine Inch Nails
    
11. Etre Une Femme by Anggun
    

1. Alegreya is a lovely serif typeface
   
2. "The worst programming language of all time" is one of the best overviews of C++
   
3. Repomix will pack "your entire repository into a single, AI-friendly file"
   

   And LLMLingua (Microsoft) will compress things for context windows.

4. A Set of Windows Themes for Linux
   

   I was tickled to try out the Windows 3.11, Windows 95, and Windows 7 ones. Simpler, purer times.

5. A 10-Week Golang Onboarding Doc
   

   Covers testing/mocking, databases, Redis, performance. For engineers at Stream. Cached.

6. Dropover enhances drag-and-drop with a simple mouse shake gesture
   

   Obsessive organizer of things and see myself using this daily.

7. Ice is a menu bar manager and an alternative to Bartender
   

I go to a pizzeria at around 2:00AM.

“Hey man can I get a slice?”
“No man only burger.”

Turns around, gets back to putting trays away.

Think before you speak, don’t waste peoples’ time, this most certainly ain’t Kansas.

I ♥️ NY 🍕

(Two large slices, cheese and pepperoni.)

And why it was very silly of me to think of them as mere adornments:

The larger fur liner creates a larger boundary layer [a thin layer of air created by molecules bumping into each other].

(Cached: fur, no fur)

I’ve never used an LUT, which stands for “Look Up Table”, and thought I’d give this one a try. The work is Fall by Allison Saar (2011). I cannot wait to take a picture of it when it snows.

Thank you, Almighty Algorithm, for this absolutely hypnotic piece of music, choreography, and camerawork.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wducEKHKRvg

More videos by the conservatory. Song by Il Est Vilaine, choreography by Martha Nichols, and camerawork by Devin Jamieson.

And here’s the Dancer in the Blue Shorts.

At the Leica store in the Meatpacking District. Love me a good cutaway.

Was looking for an alternative to my trusty “10 Hours of IceBreaker Idling in the Arctic” and found this.

over the last couple of years i’ve been making really really really quiet music to listen to when i do yoga or sleep or meditate or panic. i ended up with 4 hours of music and have decided to give it away.

it’s really quiet: no drums, no vocals, just very slow calm pretty chords and sounds and things for sleeping and yoga and etc. and feel free to share it or give it away or whatever, it’s not protected or anything, or at least it shouldn’t be.

thanks,
moby

via OpenCulture

Advice from an eminent scientist I worked for and looked up to (and still do) at my very first job after college.

Just showing up – on time, rested, clean, appropriately dressed, and well fed – is half the battle (50%).

Having enthusiasm and maintaining a patient and positive attitude despite adversity is half of the remaining half (75%).

Knowing your likes and dislikes (and your strengths and weaknesses) accurately enough that you can formulate some clear life goals that are well aligned with who you really are is half of the remaining half (87.5%).

Using the clear image of these goals to guide your decisions in such a way that you spend most of your time doing things that you enjoy and are good at is half of the remaining half (93.75%).

Surrounding yourself with people who are honest, optimistic, and who like you for who you are, is half of the remaining half (96.875%). Being honest with yourself and others – and obeying the ethic of reciprocity in everything you do – is half of the remaining half (98.4375%).

If you do all of these things most of the time, it has been my experience that good fortune can be counted on to fill in any gaps that occur and to carry you well beyond your original dreams and goals.

I read “iPhone Pocket” and got very excited about the prospect of an updated iPhone Mini (the best phone I’ve used). But lo, a $230 mankini for your fucking phone from a very unserious group of people at Apple:

“Courage” indeed.

Made me think of how insufferable I must have been in my early 20s, when New Atheism was in vogue, and I had killer arguments against faith and religion that were as necessary and delicate and nuanced as a loud fart in a cathedral. Not religious in the least but that me would’ve really loved Grant’s ramblings in this movie.

Thing is, I don’t think the writers would have landed the plane even if they’d consulted an actual academic or theologian and didn’t just rely on a 3-hour YouTube speedrun of the Best of Hitchens and Dawkins.

You can think whatever you’d like about Mormon missionaries and their obligations but it can be dangerous work. I remember two fellas visiting me in 2011. I gave them some water and we chatted. They were much younger than me but had a lot of stories to tell.

I get around 8-10 calls from 1-8xx numbers every single day, most of them pertaining to financial scams (I get as many text messages as well). A few leave voicemail and the GIF at the end of this note shows about two weeks’ worth. I’ve taken to silencing unknown numbers on my iPhone. The Do Not Call Registry is on a quick little break right now.

Actually doing something about a problem everyone agrees is awful would be antithetical to Free Market principles, a blot on the idea of Freedom itself, and would precipitate the demise of our thriving republic. Because all regulation is evil, I’ll just sack up and wait for The Market to sort it all out 🥰

A Sample of Laissez-Faire Blessings, Delivered Daily #

A most odd thing. Can’t find who recommended it to me. It’s only around 70 pages and is a magical realist retelling of Stalin’s ascent to power and his horrible and bloody legacy due to his involvement with a very licentious¹ and decently interesting vampire coven². There’s this Dorian Gray angle to the story that was rather confusing and I think unnnecessary. I really didn’t understand the ending (or maybe just don’t want to accept it).

Régis Penet captures the hopelessness, danger, and decrepitude very well.

Whoever did the soundtrack deserves a giant raise. Here’s the opening track.

1. Chloe by Joe Pass
   

   I was walking around some place in Manhattan at sunset and took a small break to just stare at things and people and The Algorithm played this and it was a perfect few minutes.

2. Like It Is by COEO
   
3. Deep Down (Remix) by Alok x Ella Eyre x Kenny Dope feat. Never Dull
   
4. Ramalama (Bang Bang) by Róisín Murphy
   

   And here’s dancer Angela Trimbur’s really, really emphatic interpretation. Love it. Reminds me of Rosamund Pike in this Massive Attack video (“Voodoo in My Blood”).

1. curlie = curl + httpie
   

   Or maybe I should STFU and just use cURL…

2. DOSBian will let you run DOSBox, Windows 95/98 on your Raspberry Pi
   
3. Grumpy.Website is a list of UI/UX Abhorrences
   

   Quite a few of them are designed to confuse and/or furstrate the user into increasing Shareholder Value™ but there are many that are firmly in “confusion of ideas” territory.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t60MMJH_1ds

Spoilers!

I’m glad I saw it on a projector. Not sure if it’s a political statement (e.g. the chandeleir being their elite privilege (a ridiculous idea, untethered to anything ‘real’ or ‘permanent’) following them or one about the human condition and our fraught, parasitic relationationship with nature or just both. We never know how tall the building is: greed is a bottomless pit. This was years before Sicario and Dune and you can just see Villeneuve’s ease with and penchant for creating huge atmospheres and settings¹.

I sincerely hope that we’re not as abjectly unprepared for some apocalyptic geopolitical event as depicted in the movie, strategically or temperamentally. People just yell at each other, crumble at the smallest setback, and don’t project the kind of professionalism and nerves of steel we assume they’d have in their position, particularly, and dismayingly, those in leadership.

It’s totally, totally different in real life. (Cached)

The most shocking part of the movie was when an analyst mentions that China was experimenting with AI to manage their defense. I know nothing but hope we continue to stick to Boring Software™ (and floppy disks) in this department.

It’s trying to say something profound or drop a very challenging ‘exercise left up to reader/viewer’ but fails spectacularly with how scattered it is and how much it’s up its own ‘somber’ and ‘meditative’ arse. Tension, TENSION, tension, tension leading up to… nothing at all. And my complaint isn’t the lack of resolution: like the tension, the monotonous and super-ominous background score befits the script by getting pretty annoying after the first 150 loops.

At least got to see Jared Harris being excellent as usual.

“INCLINATION HAS FLATTENED” is a weird sentence.

I’m one of those people who inadvertently dedicate a good chunk of their phone’s storage to pictures of their doggy. This might be the best of the lot.

For now.

Saving some snippets here but Dave Snyder’s article is worth reading, bookmarking, and meditating over (cached).

See also: “Because God Can See”

Sorry you’re too stupid for Monads bro #

This reminds me of one of the worst design decisions in React: useEffect¹. I’ve worked with it for a long while and find that I’m always doing it wrong and worse thinking about it wrong. It’s so simple! You’re just syncing side-effects bro!

It would’ve taken the kind of restraint Dave talks about for an Engineering Leader/Manager to say “I’m glad you’re high on your Functional Programming classes and ambient hype but we’re not doing it, at least not this way. It may be clever, it may simple, but it’s not easy. People who use what we make have a job to do.”

Anyway. All hail jQuery.

The words that came to mind when I saw this poster were exquisite and breathtaking. Wow.

I would be very dismayed if I spent my creative and professional energies on a half-baked abjectly unnecessary UI and UX abomination that neither adds to nor improves my users’ lives, causes confusion and squinting in many, elicits "meh"s from the rest, and leads to lengthy articles on how to disable my disruptive work so the people I purport to serve can get theirs done.

Via DaringFireball with the observation:

A useful guide for today  –  and, I bet, a useful look back at the first versions of Liquid Glass for the future.

Indeed. Looking forward to when Apple admits to making good things worse for no reason and doesn’t double-down on bullshit visions borne of arrogance, fart-sniffing, and desperation.

“iOS 26.1 Beta 4 Lets Users Control Liquid Glass Transparency with New Toggle” (MacRumors). I still think they should’ve had an option (perhaps a slider) that allowed me to turn off translucency entirely.

Boo #

Wouldn’t have any reservations calling this a ghost story. It’s at least a reverie (to the point I was wondering if Mr. Alfred would pull a “And then he woke up” towards the end) and I’m sure this was intentional. I am 51% sure that Scottie’s actually dead or in a coma in the second half.

Scottie The Alpha #

Scottie is pathetic, weak, creepy, overconfident, and domineering and would make millions on YouTube and/or the podcast circuit.

He pines after a mirage of a woman even when he has a chance to appreciate her in her literal colorful exuberance and cannot brook her as a partner¹ just as she is. He must ‘reset’ her and turn her into a bland object, this canvas he can project himself onto that absorbs all his insecurities and faults.

Now while Judy is pliant, Midge is a strong independent woman who need no man (almost) and has this vibrant and cool apartment full of art. She has several interests, tries different careers, is funny, and likes our boy and cares a lot for him. But nope: He needs her to be devoid of color and personality and ambition to return her affections.

Even my dog appreciated Hitchcock’s self-examination as the Man Who Must Control Women in the belltower scene. Maybe the scope was “as a director” 🤷‍♂️

Falling #

There’s a lot of ‘falling’ here (well duh): in love, off buildings, into graves, into darkness, into madness. I can’t remember a single scene of our hero driving uphill and don’t know what this means but wonder if this is why they picked hilly San Francisco. Speaking of, I love me a good then-and-now and wanted to see what Scottie’s apartment looks like today. That led me to this lovely website called Reels SF maintained by someone who’s been “movie location hunting” in San Francisco for over twenty years! Here’s the Vertigo page.

Disorientation #

Quite a few to pick from but this might be my favorite shot in the movie. I’m trying to learn perspective drawing and this one’s a fantastic exercise.

MOTHMA
You realize what you’ve set in motion?

LUTHEN
It’s time for that as well.

MOTHMA
Palpatine won’t hesitate now.

LUTHEN
Exactly! We need it, we need the fear, we need them to overreact.

MOTHMA
You can’t be serious.

LUTHEN
The Empire has been choking us so slowly we’re starting not to notice. The time has come to force
their hand.

MOTHMA
People will suffer.

LUTHEN
That’s the plan. You’re not angry with me. I’m just saying out loud what you already know. There will
be no rules going forward. If you’re not willing to risk your conscience then surrender and be done with it.

The show’s fierce with its experimentation and appears to have no regard for political neutrality and corporate oversight (even in spite of a staggering budget of $650M); it’s an examination of of how authoritarian regimes evolve and behave, and how they need to destroy our humanity to survive, including that of the people who uphold them because of blind ambition, greed, or rent money. Anyone who kvetches about getting politics out of Star Wars (or Sci-Fi in general) is a prize idiot.

I wonder how many years we’ll have to wait for something else like this.

By Alan Lightman, from the very lovely documentary A Trip to Infinity.

I fog up every time I see this. His smile towards the end is an emotional nuke and I’m a blubbery teary happy mess. I think of the Love I have in my life and am so very grateful. Here’s a transcript.

I was looking up at the sky one night when I was about ten years old. And I felt like my life didn’t matter. And I guess it was converting large space to large time. One star after another star after another star and wondering whether that would keep going forever.

I had this sense that the universe existed a long time before I was born, and it would exist a long time after I was dead. And I was just a speck that didn’t matter. I don’t matter. My parents don’t matter. Nothing matters. We’re all just specks. We’re just living in this brief moment.

None of us were here a million years ago. None of us will be here a million years from now. And the Universe doesn’t care. It just goes on and on and on. So, why are we wasting time, you know, going to school, having dentist appointments? All of that.

Why are we wasting our time? Because none of it matters.

And then I fell in love. And that changed everything. That mattered. Even though we might both be specks in the cosmos.

1. Lose My Cool (Franc Moody Remix) by Amber Mark
   

   Listened at Le Cheile in Washington Heights.

2. Do You Think We'll Last Forever? by Caroline Rose
   
3. Cherry Bomb by The Runaways
   
4. Lambent Rag by Clark
   

1. Hacker Laws: A Collection of Wise, Pithy, and Funny Laws for Nerds
   

   (Cached)

2. PostHog's website looks like an OS
   

   And a classic one at that (OS/2 and BeOS vibes). Amazing. Here’s how they did it. Gatsby!

I found this short story on my laptop and have no idea who sent it to me or where I might have downloaded it from. It’s funny and I imagine it would make for a nice children’s book and/or cartoon adaptation.

The document says it’s by Kyr Bylychev. The only search result I get is a Russian sci-fi and fantasy author. It was translated by Seva Gunitsky, who appears to be an American politican scientist.

🤷‍♂️

Star Trek, unbridled TechBro arrogance, rapid and unchecked technological progress, meditations on ancient questions of consciousness, identity, and dynamics of power, gamer culture, very satisfying comeuppance for the baddies… all folded into a funny and whip-smart script, executed with fantastic production value and brought to life by phenomenal acting (Jimmi Simpson, Cristin Milioti, and Jesse Plemons especially).

What else could one want? I’d put these on my Top Ten Black Mirror episode list¹ too. I hope they make a third but the second had a pretty conclusive and satisfying ending. Fantastic stuff.

• Weary master who’s really, really good at something.
• Master is aloof, introverted, irascible. Nobody’s interesting enough.
• Enter precocious, young, raw apprentice. They meet by random chance.
• Cue training montage.
• Apprentice surpasses Master.
• Master deals with the defeat/affront poorly. Substance abuse is triggered. May be brief but must be intense.
• Reconciliation and Wisdom. May occur at Master’s deathbed.

These are all covered in this movie, which is about a Go master and his genius pupil. Based on real-life pair Cho Hun-Hyun and Lee Chang-ho. I know absolutely nothing about the game so thoroughly enjoyed the “Hmmm, his opening gambit is unconventional and rabbit-like” dialogue. In the movie, players in Go world append rank to others’ names. Not sure if that’s the case in real life.

Browsing Wikipedia led me to these quotes by world champion Lee Sedol who turned pro at age 12 (!) and retired after he felt his “world collapsing” due to AI:

Indeed.

He famously played AlphaGo and was defeated 4-1. Here’s the whole documentary. I liked it better than this movie and you may, too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXuK6gekU1Y

Overall rating: B+. Listen to this album.

Tracks

• Tron

  Rating: A

  It’s just you inside a giant, empty, grain silo at night somewhere in Northwest Iowa. Three giant, white hot lights far up on the ceiling.

• Dead People's Things

  Rating: B+

  An 18 minute-long lamentation. Reminded me of some tracks from Ghosts I-IV by Reznor and Ross.

• Orgone Donor

  Rating: A+

  This one will arrest your attention. Reminded me of the opening scene of Macbeth (2015, soundtrack by Jed Kurzel). It’s many orders more intense.

• Cloud Chamber

  Rating: B+

  A most fitting, beautiful end.

Like a lot of kids I loved cutaway books (if that’s what they’re called). I would pester my parents for these and had quite a collection. Couldn’t and still can’t imagine the skill it takes to make them. So when I came by these high-res images by an illustrator from the 30s named Fred Freeman, I explored them posthaste on my iPad and saved them here to savor again at a later time.

Might be a tenuous connection but I think my deep love of miniatures might be related to my love of cutaways as 2D/flat dollhouses.

That blog’s a trove of cutaways. The folks who author it run a design agency and have published their own book on such illustrations called Look Inside.

I did like the mood (and soft-spoken narration) of the introduction but I absolutely loved that background music. It’s called Lambent Rag by Clark and is worth a listen and a watch¹.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNrt1FWmPA4

The Air looks nice² but I’ll baby my iPhone 13 Mini, perfection as far as smartphones go, for as long as I can. It was released around this time four years ago and is still going strong.